


This Isn't Control

by viv_is_spooky



Series: Down to the Root [10]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beholding!Gerry, Detective!Gerry, Fear Soup, Gen, One Per Chapter, Or Rather Multiple Statement Fics, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), The Nuances of Humanity, The Nuances of Monstrosity, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:14:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27294751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viv_is_spooky/pseuds/viv_is_spooky
Summary: Statements made at the Magnus Institute, London, involving various familiar fear avatars.
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Original Characters
Series: Down to the Root [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792387
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	This Isn't Control

**Author's Note:**

> work title is the name of a song by Ms Mr that I very highly recommend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Statement of Ashton Carr, regarding losses suffered in a strange haunted house. Original Statement given 4th November 2016.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: dissociation, disconnection with sense of self, clowns, body horror, murder, death of friend, grief, darkness**
> 
> song recommendation: "There's A Girl in The Corner" by The Twilight Sad

Never once in my life have I known who I am. Don’t get me wrong – I have a name, an age, a face of my own, and I recognize myself in the mirror most of the time. But my character is always changing, shifting and contorting to mould itself to the contours of the company I keep. One face, an infinite number of personas, no true self.

If you took the images I presented to each person I met and overlayed them, no coherent picture would form. I am nothing aside from my accomplishments and projections, no matter how much I try to smash and splice my pieces into a whole. Other people form and validate my identity. Other people could just as easily take it away – or worse, warp and manipulate it until I became nothing more than a caricature to be laughed at.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I’ve always hated clowns – a hatred born from fear, because I see parts of my many facades in their paint-forced smiles and exaggerated vibrance. A lot of people think clowns are creepy, but that’s not my perspective, not really. I find them uncanny, yes, but uncanny because they are familiar.

I’m getting off track, aren’t I? You probably need more context, less life story. More information, less identity crisis.

Well, last weekend, my friend Mallory dragged me to a haunted house. Apparently her cousin was hosting it, and she wanted to go to give moral support. “Why use the word ‘dragged’?,” you might ask. The answer to that question is long, so bear with me.

I’d met Mallory’s cousin, Adrienne, before. She’d always been equally as fascinated with darkness as Mallory was terrified of it, and I had no doubt the haunted house would be full of flickering lightbulbs and menacing shadows cast purposefully, artfully on walls – maybe with a background track of music that let out occasional growls or screams from places where light couldn’t reach. Which meant I also knew Mallory would be clinging to my side the whole time, holding onto my arm for dear life, her breath shallow against my neck – and I knew I wouldn’t _mind_ that.

That was the problem, actually – I distinctly knew I _wouldn’t_ mind it, that I’d miss the feeling of her pressed close to me, heartbeat racing with such force I could feel it pulse against my upper arm, as soon as we left the house. As soon as she let go.

I loved her.

I loved her, but she only knew one facet of me, the one painstakingly crafted and carved just for her. She could never have loved all the broken shards my soul shifts into when I’m alone, and I knew that. So when she touched me, it _ached_ in a way I doubt I’ll ever be able to put into words. But I never could say no to her, not when her eyes lit up with excitement or widened in an unspoken plea. And that night, they did both.

So it was we found ourselves in Adrienne’s haunted house, Mallory clinging to me just like I’d expected she would. Everything I’d predicted had been right – faulty lights, shadows, soundtrack…the one thing I _hadn’t_ expected was the clown.

It stood in the middle of one of the rooms – the fifth or sixth we’d walked through, I think, and for a moment I just stopped to stare in shock. It looked foreign, out of place under the flickering illumination of the bulb it stood beneath with bright makeup and juggling pins.

It looked how I feel in my own skin sometimes, a stuck-out sore thumb with no hope of fitting in, and the sight paralyzed me. At one point, I swear…I swear I saw its makeup morph and twist into the shape of _my_ face.

Then Mallory cried out, her hand wrenched out of mine as something I couldn’t see pulled her into the shadows, and the spell shattered.

I shattered too, alone and lacking, unsure how to portray myself when I knew I was nothing but jagged edges at my core. The clown waltzed slowly towards me as the lights overheat continued to sputter.

I don’t know what would have happened if it had reached me. Well, I have some idea, but we aren’t there yet. I’d rather not mention it more than I have to. It really doesn’t matter, because someone else got to me first. I couldn’t make out their features well, except…

Except for their eyes.

Cold and penetrating, their eyes glowed silver as they stared into me. I felt the person _see_ me, see through the mask of my flesh to the motley of unfinished selves, then to the hollow center of my soul. They _knew_ me in an instant, and for all I’ve yearned over the years for someone to _understand_ , I felt nothing but completely and utterly violated.

Their voice was gentler than their gaze as they set gloved hands on my shoulders with urgent gravity, speaking the words, “You are whole. You are _whole_ , and you need to _run_.”

So I ran. At that point, I didn’t know if I was more afraid of the clown or the person with silver eyes, despite the latter seemingly attempting to help me escape from the former.

In any case, I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. Then, I ducked into a building and called 999. I forget what I even told them, but I vividly remember waking up the next morning to the news that Mallory’s body had been found in the haunted house I’d left behind, tucked into a dark corner. Most of her skin had been missing, and for some reason, that didn’t surprise me.

I’m still waiting for the grief to catch up, to kick in. As of now, all I’ve been able to feel towards her since learning of her death is numbness. A dulled haze of prickly nothingness, where before there was a well of feelings so deep I could never hope to see to the bottom of it.

It’s strange, all of this. But then again, so am I. I am a stranger to my family, to my friends, and even to myself – a stranger to everyone but the silver-eyed person who I saw, who saw _me_ , in that awful house.

Those eyes are burned into the back of my mind forever now, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop seeing their owner in the corners of my own vision.

They follow me like a ghost, clearer in the periphery than they were when they stood right in front of me. Long, dark hair, a leather trenchcoat, parchment-pale skin, a thin frame, a gaze that prickles on the back of my neck everywhere I go.

It knows me. It _knows_ me, and that terrifies me more than knowing I could have met the same fate as Mallory. I would have rather been skinned alive than have my psyche rendered a page – torn out of my body and read as if my life were nothing more than a sentient book.

Like I said, everything is strange these days. My savior haunts me more than what they saved me from.


End file.
